"Team up and get linked to other members, special interest groups, local user groups, Vivit staff and the elected board of directors” was the overall theme for Vivit at HP Discover in Barcelona, December 10 – 12, 2013. If you didn’t make the conference, we hope you will consider the same opportunities to team up and get linked with Vivit now.

Vivit is proud to have the best and brightest as members and volunteers. These individuals volunteer their time to lead local user groups (LUG) and worldwide virtual special interest groups (SIG).Leaders from around the world gathered at HP Discover to represent their groups and discuss the latest HP Software developments and game changing technologies.

Team up and Link to Local User Groups and Special Interest Groups

There are 75 LUGs in 26 countries and 18 virtual SIGs.Each LUG and SIG has its own focus and personality. Members of LUGs meet face to face to share best practices, tips, and tricks. Members of SIGs meet online and can participate in blogs and webinars.Locate your LUG and SIGs of choice and select the "Join group” icon which will appear at the top of the group page if you aren’t already linked.Don’t see a local chapter near you or a particular SIG? Contact us to start and lead a new group.

Team up and Link to Award Winning Leaders

Tammy Young, LUG & SIG Chair, Board of Directors, presented the community awards for the EMEA and APJ regions at HP Discover during a Vivit leader dinner reception.Connect with these leaders who are at the forefront of community activity.This year’s winners were as follows:

Champion of the Year Award - René De Vleeschauwer from BelgiumSpeaker of the Year Award - Mark Laird from United KingdomLeader of the Year Award - Mostafa Moussavi from Sweden

Vivit’s strategic focus is to build a community platform where relevant conversations happen. Vivit’s booth at HP Discover provided many opportunities for individuals to connect and interact with each other. Over the past five years, Vivit has successfully changed, grown, and adapted to align with the new style of IT.Vivit members are considered industry thought leaders and evangelists who have a passion for leading and participating in the conversation and who come together to collaborate through the three pillars:community, education, and advocacy. Many conversations took place during HP Discover, both members and non-members had the opportunity to discuss and learn more about Vivit, plus individuals had the opportunity to play some foosball and win an authentic Barcelona football jersey.

Individuals waiting on prize drawings.

Some Barcelona football jersey winners.

Individuals playing foosball.

Vivit Leaders sharing their expertise in the booth.

Team up and Link to Board of Directors and Staff

Nine outstanding members and thought leaders serve on the Board of Directors. They met face to face for two days prior to HP Discover to discuss the state of the user community and programs to serve members going forward. Many of the dedicated staff attended HP Discover as well. If you didn’t get a chance to meet them in person, feel free to contact them anytime.

We hope to see as many members as possible at future events. Mark your calendars for HP Discover in Las Vegas, June 10 – 12, 2014. We are already working on our community program.It is our mission to help fellow members tap into the wealth of collective knowledge in Vivit, the trusted, unbiased, and field-tested HP Software user community. If you have any suggestions or requests, please contact us.

Please be sure to update your Vivit profile by December 31, 2011 so you can be entered into the final drawing for an iPad 2. The information you enter will be used to provide meaningful content and services.

2. Select "Manage Profile” from the "My Profile” menu on the left hand side.

3. Select "Edit Bio” under "Information & Settings.”

4. Complete all * required fields. In order for changes to be recorded, click on the "Save Changes" button at the bottom of your profile page. You will automatically be entered into the final drawing for an iPad 2.

If you updated your profile since October 1, thank you. You'll be included in the final drawing.

Conditions and restrictions: To enter into the final drawing towin an iPad, make sure all the required fields in the Edit Bio section of your profile are complete byDecember 31, 2011. One random drawing for one Apple iPad 2 16GB with Wi-Fi will be conducted onJanuary 2, 2012. Chances of winning depend on the number of entrants.

As I fly back to America from the HP Discover show in Vienna this week, I have plenty of time to reflect on the years of participation by so many colleagues. Vivit has truly become an amazing organization which now has several interesting features. The organization has been around long enough now to see many of its member grow in their careers from initial technical administrators into specialists, management, architects and executives.

All the while, membership has not lost its technical edge with the individuals continuing to represent the "best and brightest” that we proclaim you are. However, just as interesting is the global nature and of the organization now. We are almost exactly split in our membership 50/50 between members in the Americas and with the rest of the world. Then it becomes even more interesting to look at the product representation of our membership – almost 50/50 between Operations products and Applications products.

Our membership has increased significantly and we have expanded into 53 Chapters spanning 19 countries, with 7 worldwide Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and 110 Chapter and SIG leaders. We are working on having the Vivit members once again provide Track Content and Chairs for HP Discover and collectively the group of all the members has reached new heights. I found the picture below that I snapped with my phone very ironic at the welcome reception so I thought I would share it here. Most importantly though, is participation. The ability to interact with our EMEA HP counterparts, HP Partners and most importantly Vivit members has been one of the most exciting events for the EMEA region in years, with over 7,000 participants in total! But actively participating in local chapter events, Special Interest Groups, Forums, Blogs, Training, Webinars, Road Shows, Presentations and everything else that Vivit offers is the key to the organization helping to grow the careers of you, its members.

Vivit is very proud of the membership, in particular due to the fact that we require active participation by all members within the past 12 month period in order to continue being counted as a member. While some organizations may have a large list of people that may have been involved or on the mailing list at one time, Vivit is a community of individuals who participate. I know that I am looking forward to attending the next event. Michael Collins, Vivit President.

Hello from Vienna! While I drink my Latte Machiatto and eat my croissant and wait for delegate access to HP Discover 2011 EMEA to open to delegates, I will update any who are following this on our presentation last night of the Vivit Worldwide Champion and Leader of the Year, 2011. What seemed like the largest number of chapter and SIG leaders to gather for dinner yet converged on the upper floor of the 1516 restaurant in downtown Vienna last night. The dinner was for Vivit to have an opportunity to recognise our leaders who keep the machinery of Vivit moving - without them there would be no Vivit Worldwide. At the dinner we recognised both our EMEA Leader of the Year and Champion of the Year.

The Champion of the Year is a new recognition category this year, beginning this fall as a decision by your Vivit Directors. We find that as we are an organisation that is accountable to our members, we have always held the policy that HP employees cannot be leaders in our organisation. That long standing and popularly supported by-law has led us to a conundrum however; what happens when an HP employee goes above and beyond in their support for the Vivit Worldwide community and goals? In order to rectify this oversight, we created the category of Vivit Champion of the Year.

This year, while receiving a couple of strong nominations, we did eventually make the decision to award this honour to Paolo Cattacolio from HP in France. Paolo has been instrumental this past year in bringing the European user community of the TRIM product into the Vivit family. TRIM was acquired by HP, as a great asset to their software portfolio, but the well-established local user groups of the product were left without a global connecting community to HP Software. This is where Paolo, and Vivit Director Richard Bishop identified a need and worked tirelessly to support these users. So in recognition of his support of the Vivit user community worldwide, and the TRIM software users need to interconnect globally for advocacy, education, and community, Vivit President Michael Collins and myself (Director of SIGs & Chapters, and co-leader of the BSM SIG) presented the beautiful trophy for EMEA 2011 Vivit Champion of the Year to Paolo.

After a rousing round of applause, Michael called attention to the awarding of the Vivit EMEA Leader of the Year. I believe this is the third year for this reward, which has gone to the passionate and thorough work of our German leaders in years past. This time we moved the trophy north in recognition of the efforts this past year, and years previous, of Martijn Stuiver. Martijn is a co-leader of the SM SIG, and has recently integrated existing customer and partner communities in Holland into a Dutch local user group. Michael extended a sincere thanks, and warnings to carry the trophy carefully! Martijn shared with the rout his secret passion for 5-pin bowling, but we aren't sure when he would possibly have the time! We just hope he doesn't use the globe from the trophy!

Thank you to both Paolo & Martijn, all the leaders who were present, and all our leaders around the world who couldn't join us in Vienna, but whose passionate work for Vivit is noted year round. If you know a great Vivit leader in your local chapter or special interest group, or an HP employee who goes above and beyond to support the HP Software user community, please make sure you let myself or Stephanie know about them, and be certain to nominate them for the next Champion and Leader of the Year.

Entering the third year of my term on the Vivit Board of Directors, I am very excited by all of the opportunities that we are presented with at this time. Recently appointed by my peers to the President position, I am humbled by the chance to work with such a great group of Board members, chapter leaders, staff, and most importantly, the user community which makes this organization so great.

We recently launched a long awaited Vivit website community which is vibrant, well organized and easy to use. We continue to migrate all of the functionality of the old site and introduce new features so that it makes for a better user experience.

Recently, we held our semiannual face-to-face Board meeting which took place at HP Discover in Las Vegas. The board reviewed overall organizational health and current direction. The stability and health is at the highest point in many years both as an organization and in membership.

We also held a chapter and SIG leader meeting at the conference which provided the perfect opportunity to discuss improving processes, relationships, and tools to serve the entire community even better. We can't thank Vivit chapter and SIG leaders enough for their hard work throughout the year as well as their participation in the Vivit exhibit at HP DISCOVER.

Vivit members also convened for the annual meeting, followed by deep dive round table discussions. We presented the status of the user community in an open forum, Karen Semonson passed the "President” torch to me, and then members shared their knowledge and best-practices on HP Service Management, Functional Testing with BPT/QTP, Performance Testing and Engineering, and Quality Center API.

The Advanced HP Software Implementation Training organized by Jim Murphy, Vice President, was another success. Subject matter experts from the Vivit community provided eight different deep-dive training sessions in the hours leading up to HP DISCOVER.

To top it off, we co-hosted a user community appreciation party for existing and new members. We presented Laura Walker with the 2011 Leader of the Year award for the Americas region.

In my opinion, HP DISCOVER was one of the most exciting events in the past several years. The combination of the various conferences, as well as bringing the hardware and software constituents together, worked out better than I had imagined. Appealing to and surpassing 10,000 attendees was a feat in itself, but the way in which the event was organized, as well as the DISCOVER Zone show floor, lent itself to fantastic collaboration and presentation.

I would also be remiss if I did not mention the phenomenal exclusive musical event. I have no idea how Paul McCartney could be topped, but I am excited to find out next year!

Likely, what I am most excited about is the current state of our local chapters and membership. We have a very active user base which is reflective in the individuals who make up Vivit. The new chapters which have improved the global presence of the organization are key to further success. I am also excited for our next meeting in conjunction with HP DISCOVER in Vienna later this year to see how we build upon the successes of the first part of the year.

Vivit will continue partnering with HP, partners and other user groups while we remain your independent voice of the HP Software User Community, promoting community, education and advocacy. Check out the new website and all is has to offer. Be sure to update your profile.